Need some help shipping speakers
I recently found a pair of speakers I’ve been wanting for years. Unfortunately, they’re about 1000 miles away. Great price, great condition, great seller but just a little too far away for a road trip.
The seller is an elderly gentleman who can’t help in any way, but is willing to accommodate me once the money is paid (yes I know there’s risk buying speakers sight unseen and not unheard but the price is too good to pass up, and I’m willing to roll the dice).
Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for a company that would come to his house crate up the speakers and ship them to me? I’ve heard some happy ending stories over the years, but never really paid much attention to the detail.
Thank you for any advice you can give me!
Things to consider..There are many good freight companies that ship fine art etc. call some of the smaller companies near you and ask who is the best for expensive pieces. This is really important. Insure the cost of replacement for both speakers on each speaker....that way if one gets damage and there are no matches you can get new matched pair. |
I recently shipped a pair of Quad ESL 57 speakers from NorCal to Chicago. The cost of crating/packing and shipping/insurance ranged from $1,500 to $2,000 and I checked several resources, including the one mentioned by @mofimadness. In the end a friend who works in an art gallery brought a bunch of supplies to my place and we wrapped the speakers, then made a very sturdy box for them with thick cardboard. Shipping weight was 115 lbs. FedEx charged $800 to pick them up and deliver them. |
You’ve gotten some great advice here. I think your decision is more how much of a discount you’re getting on the speakers with add on costs of getting them to you. The road trip may be your cheapest and safest route. I just had three different experiences with the deliveries of audio equipment, two of them with speakers. 1.) I ordered 2 REL S/812 subwoofers from The Music Room (TMR) website. They sent the subwoofers (which weighs 75 lbs. each). They came in their original packaging boxes, put side by side on a plastic pallet, strapped to the pallet and sent to me for the cross country trip and was delivered from a huge FedEx truck, not the regular delivery service truck and delivered them using a pallet jack to my front door. A flawless transaction!! The subs look and sound great. I couldn’t be happier!! 2.) As I am building a REL 6-Pack Subwoofer Array I ordered 2 more REL S/812’s from Magnolia Audio/Best Buy in Southern California (Pasadena ) (I live in Northern California/San Francisco area) These were close-out purchases, so no shipping options through them. As I write this I’m preparing for the drive home. The purchase was flawless, the drive down went well (approx. 400 miles one way) 3.) Just before leaving for SoCal I took delivery on a vintage 1970’s TEAC 3340S Reel to Reel Tape Recorder which I bought through the Reverb website. The RTR came from a seller in Austria. To make a long story short. The seller didn’t package it well and FedEx didn’t handle the package well either and the unit arrived damaged, broken reel spindle, broken empty reel. I stopped looking after that and contacted the seller, who thinks he has no culpability in the occurrence of the damage of the unit. He literally used two layers of standard small bubble-wrap put it in a thin makeshift cardboard box with no additional padding and ship it through FedEx (the RTR weighs 44 pounds)…So be aware when asking someone who is not a professional to package your precious gear.,, Have a happy roadtrip!! |
